Dismissed as “Joe Who?” when elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1976, Joe Clark went on to become Canada’s sixteenth prime minister and one of the most consequential figures in modern Canadian politics. This authoritative biography chronicles Clark’s public life and examines the issues that animated it: constitutional reform, Indigenous rights, feminism, environmental policy, social programs, and Canada’s international role.

Born in High River, Alberta, Clark enjoyed stints as a university student activist, political organizer and staffer, member of Parliament, and leader of the Opposition before winning his minority government. As prime minister he admitted more than 50,000 Southeast Asian refugees to Canada, and introduced freedom of information legislation, but his government fell on a budget proposing a controversial fuel tax. As external affairs minister he helped lead Canada’s opposition to South African apartheid, responded to the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War, and advanced women’s representation in foreign affairs. Accessing unreleased cabinet documents and undertaking personal interviews with political leaders, diplomats, Clark’s childhood and university friends, and Clark himself, Matthew Hayday paints a picture of a life in spent in the service of improving Canada. He situates his subject amidst the reconfiguration of the Canadian right wing as Red Tories and socially moderate conservatives contended with rising neoliberal, fiscally conservative, and socially conservative forces.

The result is an indispensable account of the transformation of the country and Canadian conservatism – and of how an unlikely Progressive Conservative leader became a widely respected elder statesman on the global stage.